There are a lot of things that aren't what they used to be - a walk in the countryside is fairly high on that list, but some things are fundamentally timeless. Take the gentleman before you - from the elegent dark leather cloak that could just about pass as some sort of biker jacket to the neat little wraparound sunglasses resting on the tip of his nose he could be slipped into almost any spot in several hundred years of world history and, with little more than the most casual adjustment, would soon find himself hanging out in digital bars winking at girls and calling people 'man' or, just possibly 'chummer'.

 They'd have to be fairly forgiving people of course, on account of his not actually having eyelids - the fellow happening to be a rather more than man-sized and distinctly serpentine nonhuman. Glittering gold and black scales in an appealling cascade of diamond patterns cover him from the tip of his blunt, rounded muzzle to the end of the long, long prehensile tail that forms the vast majority of his body. Standing - if the word applies - a little taller than the average human being, he's slender and graceful (or as graceful as a scholar can be) in an almost unnatural fashion, yet there's a curious stop-motion about his flowing progression and a terrible concentration that suggests he's having to think about almost everything before he does it, as if remembering just how meat works exactly.

 Oh. And he has wings. Metal ones, to be sure - some sort of alloy of polished brass and strange synthetic spurs set with a polychromatic cascade of gloriously bright feathers, wings enough to give give him the power of making one hell of an entrance and perhaps of flight as well.